Is It a Blizzard? A Nor’easter? And What’s the Difference?

On March 1, 1888, a buyer for the department store Edward Ridley & Sons in New York City made an error. For $1,200, the buyer, John J. Meisinger, bought a carload of unclaimed wooden snow shovels — 3,000 of them — to sell at the store, the story goes. It was a “ridiculous low price,” Mr. Meisinger later wrote, but strangely timed. “Many of the buyers laughed at the idea of me buying snow shovels at the end of the…